


Homebase.

by sinnerrific



Category: Haikyuu!!, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Class Issues, Homelessness, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, Not Beta Read, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Slavery, Triggers, Unplanned Story, Urban Fantasy, VERY UNFINISHED WORK, may be revised or abandoned, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 04:52:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16078820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinnerrific/pseuds/sinnerrific
Summary: Everyone knows that the place you are born is the place where you are strong, or at least, where you are safe. Where the world around you is part of your very being, its rippling power at hand if you need it. Where you are connected via the supernatural to the ground you walk on, the air you breathe, the people in your neighborhood and beyond to the border's edge.This is not the place you were born.This is a place where you are an outcast. Or property. Or, something worse.An individual.





	Homebase.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a confusing, unexplained AU of a world made of urban fiefdoms, populations where all ppl are all born w/supernatural powers (or weaknesses!) tied to geography, & class warfare and real warfare and so much fucked-up shit that u would not believe
> 
> Characters will be tagged as they appear

There is no regularly scheduled practice over school holidays for the entire homebase of Datekou. In most districts, high schoolers are encouraged to rest at home or do team-building activities if they still want to participate in clubs. But with regional intramurals looming for all sports clubs in the spring, it's no surprise that Date Tech's volleyball club captain Moniwa has been pressed by his yearmates to accommodate their clamoring for more training so that their senior year's performance will be its best, for all that it's only a dedicated handful of them at their high school.  
  
They weren't allowed to use the wide, multi-terrain arena Moniwa had found that made up the neighboring district's intramural practice court on their own without coaches or a reservation. But it was the best they could work out, far enough out from Date Tech and their neighboring homes that nobody's parents would know or inform the school.

It wasn't that practice for volleyball was frowned upon. Then again, volleyball wasn't the biggest part of the picture.

* * *

 

They'd finished their serves and blocks, and the captain was distracted. Futakuchi Kenji grinned with a shit-eating expression of daring at Kamasaki before the senior could even bark at him to start their drills, and without breaking eye contact Futakuchi held out his arm before him as if on display. In a smooth, fluid movement like silvery water, the skin of his shoulders traveling all the way down his arms and fingertips was enveloped in a coating of perfect iron.

The skin's outer shell was hard enough to be impenetrable, something Futakuchi had practiced long and hard to master. He could make himself a living statue, a part of the team's own miniature "Iron Wall." Even with an outer shell of iron strength coating his skin like a living statue, though, it didn't hinder Futakuchi's movement. Which he showed in the next moment by lifting one of the fingers of his ironcoated hand into an obscene gesture, that sent the once-bemused Kamasaki into a flurry of curses that the rest of their teammates calmly took in stride.

Business as usual in their own little corner of Homebase.

So they had found an empty court. Big deal, as Kamasaki and Sasaya had said dismissively when Moniwa expressed doubts over early practice. They knew what they were doing with their powers. Just because the athletic clubs at schools liked to be there at all times to instruct or guide every aspect of the _non-sports_ exercises that teams did didn't mean that teenagers couldn't find the thread connecting them to one another, to the place they had been born.

To the vast expanse of land that was their Datekou.

And the third-years had wanted--no, insisted on additional practice during the vacation period, notwithstanding that in this instance 'the team' was understood to mean Kamasaki and Sasaya speaking for the group. Their badgering Moniwa into submission was a silent override of any case there might have been for a relaxing break, whether their disgruntled underclassmen liked it or not.

It's fine, Kenji thinks, already in his usual practice routine despite the lack of the school's protective walls in the form of eyes surrounding them. High school students could be doing worse things with their holidays than practice intramurals.

* * *

"Oh, hey!" It's Koganegawa's exclamation from the outer edge of the makeshift court that initially tugs Futakuchi's attention back to the present. Futakuchi scowls over at the giant freshman purely out of habit, looking yet not really seeing him, and then turns back to his own argument just as quickly without much hearing what Koganegawa follows it up with.

"Oh, wow!! Another team!" The freshman beams and points excitedly toward the sight of a group of approaching unfamiliar figures, already assuming they've arrived for the same reason his own team has. He's nudging Sakunami beside him without realizing the size disparity between them means poor Sakunami is nearly buckled over by the force of too-tall Koganegawa's elbow to his ribs.

"D'you think they play volleyball??"

Somewhere on the court, it's too easy to imagine how Aone snaps to attention at these words, instincts firing up in and instant transforming him into a stony monolith of terror and intimidation that he becomes whenever any rival team or even some other, unrelated team's lost underclassman crosses Datekou's path. Aone is kind of an asshole like that, if only about intramurals, which is sort of Kenji's fault. Aone is built solidly enough and with a face that could frighten on its own, but he and Kenji both have mastered during intramurals how to channel their homebase connection to Datekou in a way that allows them to create hard outer shells for themselves of stone and iron over skin.

It's a technique that has been used by the actual homebase guardians for generations. The famous Iron Wall of Datekou, a wall of human steel guarding the keystone from any outside threat and impossible to breach--not exactly in the teenagers' reach in scope and certainly not discipline, but for a district's high school volleyball team Aone and Futakuchi make a more than impressive enough facsimile in the sense they're solidly terrifying.  
  
(Sometimes Futakuchi idly dreams of joining the guardians upon his high school graduation. Not seriously, but in the way all members of volleyball or football or any athletic clubs do throughout the wide expanse of Datekou; especially when the point of club activity in sports is half for its own sake and half learning to familiarize the power of the land that they were born in, turn it into power of their own. Futakuchi doesn't know how it is for the nebulous foreign homebases outside their borders, but not many teens in Datekou at least have the _real_ potential of future keystone guardians.

But to feel that connection to the iron all around them and share it with a team…to coordinate with Homebase and one another and feel power beyond themselves…there's something in that experience that all club students seem driven to grasp whether or not they ever make true effort.)

Somewhere on the court Moniwa doubtless is already alerted in the same instant too: his own brain hardwired by now to run interference for his delinquent juniors. Moniwa is forever suffering and tearing his hair out in anxiety trying to keep both Aone and Futakuchi out of trouble in school and gym or from terrorizing other schools' students, for sports-related reasons. Which, is also Kenji's fault sort of too.

Sayasa's voice is sharp like always from somwhere and it sounds like he's running in their direction from the back of the lot. And Futakuchi's not hearing that either because it's all what he's used to hearing, his upperclassman's derision assumed without need felt to examine the tone or the words.

"Hold--Hold on a minute, this isn't--" drifts a strained voice from near the hanging volleyball net.

"Wait," Sasaya says sharply, his voice carrying oddly clear and loud.

Futakuchi's so used to hearing all the voices, his teammates. The orbiting freshmen, Moniwa screeching at him, or Aone, or the whole collective of them to please, just this once, behave; and for Futakuchi the sound of these and the captain's voices is expected and doesn't initially register in Futakuchi's present mind.

Kamasaki, of course, is who currently has Futakuchi's real attention. The crotchety senior is red-faced and pissed and spitting insults, practically blowing steam from his nostrils, and Futakuchi is accustomed to turning up the dial of his temper just to prove he can because that's how it goes. He laughs and distantly hears Sakunami yelp from probably having missed a return or else colliding particularly hard on the ground for more libero's bruising knees.  
  
A gutteral sound of surprise that almost isn't recognizable as Aone's misses Futakuchi's notice for seconds too long, occupied.

And with what. Of course, Futakuchi's arguing still in his well-rehearsed way with Kamasaki--or thinks he's arguing. There's half a scathing remark of disrespect passing Futakuchi's lips when very loudly, very suddenly, a cacophony of horrified shouting cuts through the final tie of routine intramurals to get both Kenji's and Kamasaki's full attention. Kamasaki moves and shouts something frantic at his side, and Futakuchi whips about toward the sound of his teammates' yells.

And he is greeted by the sight of a living nightmare he is unable to comprehend.

* * *

It's not just his teammates he sees. Something icy seizes in his lungs and Kenji can feel, the moment he snaps his focus to the figures closing the distance with frightening speed, that these are Strangers. Not strangers of the type the team hasn't met, strangers in the sense that _they are not Datekou._ They are not Homebase.  
  
And they are coming.

Moniwa's next yell Futakuchi hears clearly: it cleaves through his fogged-up consciousness in a way that does not, and will not ever leave him again.

 _ **"Raiders!!"** _ the captain's panicked scream goes out from the center of the court.

And just like that every member of Date Tech's intramural volleyball club is fighting for their lives.

**Author's Note:**

> very very very very in-progress thought experiment  
> liable to be edited and nitpicked to hell and back and changed and overhauled bc I'm flying blind


End file.
